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The Faculty Senate will urge administrators to amend proposed changes to the university's sexual harassment policy, the group's vice president said Tuesday.
A draft of multiple changes to the policy, which was given to constituency groups for feedback, has many faults that need to be worked on before it can be taken seriously, said Senate Vice President Mary Lamb.
"I think that this entire document is produced for the purpose of defending the Board (of Trustees) and board rights rather than looking at a fair and equitable process," Lamb said.
Constituency groups were urged by SIU President Glenn Poshard to submit their opinions to the Sexual Harassment Working Group, a panel of faculty and staff with professional experience regarding harassment.
Instead of passing suggestions on to the working group, Lamb said the senate should adopt its own resolution against certain changes to show the administration how serious it is about the policy.
Lamb said the resolution would combine Faculty Senate members' opinions, which she planned to collect through a survey distributed at the meeting.
The survey includes 19 statements about the new policy and procedures. Faculty members are then asked whether they agree, disagree or have no opinion on the statements, such as "A limit of 5 days in which to appeal the decision of the Compliance Officer is sufficient."
Lamb said she decided to move forward with the idea to adopt a resolution independent of the working group when she saw the response of the members of the senate, who were briefed on the new policy by legal counsel Tuesday.
After Phyleccia Cole, associate general counsel, presented the policy, Lamb spoke out against the changes for several minutes.
She was followed by James Ferraro, an associate professor of physiology. Ferraro quoted excerpts from the Illinois Human Rights Act and a statement from the National Association of Scholars on matters of sexual harassment that he said provided clearer language than the university's proposed policy.
Ferraro, who teaches two classes on human sexuality, said the policy's definition is too broad and vague because it states harassment is defined by a victim's perception of an act.
He said that loose definition could lead to misinterpretations of innocent acts. A woman could be walking with something written on the back of her shorts and someone reading it could be accused of expressive behavior of sexual harassment, he said.
"Any facial expression could be interpreted by a person in any way they want to interpret it, and there would be no defense of that because it specifically says it's defined by the person's perception," Ferraro said.
Ferraro said he is not against prosecution of real sexual harassment, but it first must be clearly and properly defined.
Lamb said she brought concerns such as this and the power of the compliance officer - a position that would oversee the entire process of sexual harassment education and investigation in the proposed changes - to Cole but felt they were not addressed seriously.
"I felt that her responses to my concerns were trivial," Lamb said. "There's so much wrong with the powers given to the compliance officer beyond the power to choose who hears their appeal. They have very inappropriate and absolute power over the process."
Lamb was put in charge of the faculty's policy discussion because Senate President Peggy Stockdale abstained from the conversation because she is also a member of the Sexual Harassment Working Group.
Stockdale, a psychology professor who has studied issues of harassment, gave an overview of concerns about formulating harassment policies and highlighted three areas of concern on which the faculty should provide input.
Those included how to help victims address harassment, how to provide a safe environment and how to deal with charges of harassment.
Stockdale said the policy needs much more clarification and the review process - which Poshard originally asked to be completed by Nov. 1 - should slow down.
"The faculty are concerned that we're rushing it too much, and we need to take some time to discuss a little bit more, and I think that's a reasonable concern," Stockdale said.
